On Fear

Fear has left the building. I’ve suspected that since the cardiac arrests.

But then the accident happened, and during recovery I felt something again. Riding at night, easing back onto the bike, there was an edge there. Enough that I thought, okay, maybe fear still has a seat at the table.

I don’t think that’s true anymore.

What I felt after the accident wasn’t fear. It was residue. Something physiological.  Something my body remembered even if my mind didn’t carry it the same way anymore. A response, not a belief. And I think I confused the two.

Flying back from Columbus, I noticed something.

Actually, I didn’t notice it at first, and that’s the strange part. It was the absence of something that made it stand out.

Normally, I hate heights. Always have. Anything more than about a foot off the ground and my body lets me know. Butterflies, tightness, that little voice in the back of my head telling me this isn’t right.

Except this time? Nothing. No queasiness. No tension. No edge.

Takeoff came and went. I looked out the window. Watched the ground fall away. Nothing.

At one point I caught myself thinking about the possibility of a crash. And I laughed.

Not a nervous laugh. A real one. The kind where you’re actually amused by your own thoughts. Wondering what people would say about the last few years of my life if it all ended in a plane crash. The story. The irony of it.

But the crash itself? Didn’t scare me.

Now, I’m not claiming I’ve solved fear. I’m not saying one flight rewrites everything. But the data point is hard to ignore. Something changed.

Maybe dying stripped something out of me that I didn’t even realize was optional. Maybe what I used to call fear was just habit. Conditioning. A learned response that kept replaying itself long after it stopped serving any real purpose.

Because here’s the truth: fear keeps people small. It keeps them quiet. Keeps them safe. Keeps them stuck.

How many people go to their grave carrying regret over something they never did? Something they wanted. Something they knew they should have chased.

And why didn’t they?

Fear.

Fear of rejection. Fear of failure. Fear of being seen. Fear of being broke. Fear of being wrong. Fear of everything.

Post-death me doesn’t have much patience for that anymore. I’ve spent too much time on the other side of the line to give fear the kind of authority it used to have.

That doesn’t mean I don’t feel things. It means I don’t listen to them the same way. I walk through it.

Or at least, I thought I was walking through fear. Now I’m starting to wonder if I was just walking through the echo of it.

Fear debilitates. And if I could encourage anyone to do one thing, it would be this: Stop giving it a seat at the table. Let it ride in the back if it has to come along. But don’t let it drive.

Because more often than not… it’s not even real anymore.